Dr. Avery had taken his notes long before modern standards of filing and information control had come into practice, and he’d never been known for being a tidy man even by the standards of his day.

But what Maribelle found in his personal collection beggared description.

“First volume: Manual of Axiomatic Set Theory by Quigley, first edition,” she said into her tape recorder. “Page 17: unsigned note reminding self to purchase bananas at the grocery store. Page 26: draft of a love letter to one ‘E. D. K.’ on notebook paper. Page 192: list of household items needing repair with hourly contractor rates on back of Chinese take-out menu.”

Nothing about Avery’s theories or academic work, just reams of bizarre personal scribbles unrelated to anything. Then there were the bookmarks marking the wrong pages, referring to lines, sets, and theories which didn’t exist in the text. Pieces of paper with notes, erratic bookmarks, and marginalia in an indecipherable hand despite Avery’s legible penmanship elsewhere…all things which seemed to have to have no single purpose.